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Apple Cider: Autumn Is Here
I miss our apple trees and the tradition of making apple cider.
Since we’ve lived in Wisconsin, we’ve had a home fruit orchard. That is, until this year. We moved. Our last house had fruit trees that we planted over the sixteen years we lived there. Cherries, pear, plum, and of course, apple. There were several varieties of each, with the exception of the pear tree — of which we had three trees of the same variety. There were about thirty trees in all.
When you have fruit trees, life somehow revolves around them. It starts in late winter when you prune off the crossing branches or those that are dead or hanging too low. Then comes spraying with dormant oil and subsequently pesticide once the flowers were gone to ensure a bountiful harvest.
The beautiful light pink blooms of the trees were a constant phenological signal that spring had arrived. However, there were years when we got a snowstorm or cold temps in April after a warm spell that induced budding and blooming. We dreaded that occurrence as it meant a low fruit yield. But the little orchard was a beautiful sight in the spring when it was blooming — fruit or not.
